The ABC's of Chick Flicks

I am a woman. While this statement may mean very little to you, the next person or any other person, what it means is that I am a born expert on the genre of film so aptly named, “The Chick Flick.” (Then again, if you’re a chauvinist, it might mean that I can make a damned great sandwich.... Well, I can, I have witnesses and guinea pigs to vouch, but that’s hardly the point.)

            Just this past year I was part of a communal blogging website for a Canadian College. As such, we were required to pick blog topics which would be the highlight of our very own webpage. Now naturally I am a procrastinator, I feel this gift/curse (ala Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde) of a habit was not my fault; I was simply born into it and eventually found a profession which accepted it as the norm. What happened then was something of a frantic last minute topic pick and I just so happened to pick “Chick Flicks,” yes, having Gerard Butler on the television may have influenced my decision... so what?

            I spent the year watching chick flicks with a bowl of popcorn and a trusty box of Kleenex, sometimes scribbling down notes to blog about at a later time. Basically, I am well-versed in the art of the chick flick. So, when it was time for me to think of what I could write about for this week’s blog post, chick flicks naturally came to mind. I know, I hear a groan or two, maybe a few less clicks on my blog this week but I thought I could make it fun... you know that thing that people sometimes have?

            Without further ado, I present to you: The ABC’s of Chick Flicks!

SPOILER ALERT: I SPOIL CHICK FLICKS AHEAD!

     A is for atonement. Yes, ironically also the aptly titled chick flick starting Keira Knightly and James McAvoy but also a very very important plot standard of chick flicks. Boy loves girl, boy does something nearly irredeemably idiotic. Girl vows never to forgive boy. Boy finds way to make her forgive him. Atonement can also be very unconsciously woven into the plot, misleading the viewers until moments before the film ends. In this case, I’m using the actual movie named after this plot device, Atonement (so shoot me.)

            I’m not going to lie; I have a big weakness for period pieces that find a way to very accurately use little bits of large scale historical events in the plot. Based on a novel of the same title by British author Ian McEwan, Atonement is such a film. Set in the years that would ultimately lead up to World War II, Atonement is all about people proving others wrong. Robbie (McAvoy), the male lead, falsely accused of a crime he did not commit based on the testimony of a child with a dashed crush, goes off to war to earn his freedom. His newly found love, Cecilia (Knightly) becomes a nurse etc, etc. We see Cecilia and Robbie come together time and time again only for the relationship to fail – wrong time, different pages, different choices. What becomes clear to the viewers nearing the last five minutes of the movie is that the entire show of the relationship Robbie and Cecilia have over the course of the many months and years has all been a ruse. The girl who gave the false testimony that put Robbie in prison and eventually pushed him to war tells an interviewer in the film that she wrote a life for Cecilia and Robbie out of guilt for separating them. The novel she writes is her way of atoning for her actions that she could never take back. Atonement, also very sneaky.

     B is for bad boy. The bad boy can easily be identified by his tattoos, a leather jacket, very manly scruff, possibly an accent, most likely more than twenty-odd notches on his bedpost... of which he will brag about frequently: see most Gerard Butler roles. The bad boy is a common plot device seen in such films as Grease (a personal favourite), The Ugly Truth, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton and numerous others that shall remain unmentioned by title for the simple reason that this post is already going to be long enough. It’s a formula that isn’t difficult to figure out; it plays to the old tune of how women would love to change men... treat them as a hobby between work and other such time consuming issues in life. Women would love to date that bad boy and change him into something all together different. As many women I know can attest... this rarely works and usually ends up in failure on many levels. For the sake of examples, I’ll use The Ugly Truth, starring Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler (notice that I chose a Gerard Butler role for poetic justice to my previous statement).

            In the film Heigl plays an uptight, work obsessed TV producer that also happens to be a dateless wonder. Enter Butler, a crude, uncouth, foul-mouthed TV personality that lives life in the fast lane. Butler agrees to train Heigl to woo her single doctor neighbour before Butler and Heigl’s characters eventually fall for each other. In the end, Butler’s character changes and becomes softer and a lot less like the character we see in the beginning of the film. Recall the word film; this does not happen in real life. 

    

C is for catastrophe. This is one of the plot devices that doesn’t need much of an explanation. Ingredients: 1 female lead; 1 male lead; 2 heaping scoops of love; 1 catastrophe to tear them apart and in the process play with our heartstrings and bring on the tears. Catastrophes can be large scale or minor but for the effect of absolute hopelessness and the feeling of overcoming the seemingly insurmountable odds, the catastrophes usually end up being large scale. War, accidents, clashing of societal classes... it ends in death en mass: identifying marks of major catastrophe. I won’t name multiple films about catastrophe because it’s unneeded really because one chick flick really wraps this category up in a package complete with a pretty bow.

Titanic my friends, yes, Titanic.  

A blockbuster film, Titanic is a chick flick you start watching already knowing fully what will happen in the end - the ship will sink, people will die – and yet most women have watched it more than once and burst out into tears like clockwork at marked scenes. Titanic is still the master of catastrophe chick flick themed movies, even fourteen years after its release.

D is for disease. I’m starting to feel as if we’re part of a Sesame Street episode. Now disease is a very overused plot tool used in this genre of film; A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, Love and Other Drugs, Sweet November (to which the tag line is: “She only needed a month to change his life forever.”) and 50 First Dates use disease as a vessel to get their point across. Now usually this disease will come in three forms, ranking them in order of most likely so: cancer, Alzheimer’s and/or progressive heart failure. Since I’m pretty sure most of the known world and everyone within the sixth degree of separation rule has seen The Notebook, I’ll use that one as an example. Noah and Allie – two young people that fall in love and go through life fighting to be together; eventually they get married, have kids who have kids and grow old as most of us do. Later we will find out that Allie, the love of Noah’s life has an aggressive form of Alzheimer’s which means that Noah must painstakingly read Allie the story of their love to spend only a moment with her. Noah does this everyday for as long as he can remember.   

     

Carpe Annum

Everyone has heard the saying “Carpe Diem,” or in plain English, “Seize the Day.” Live each day as if it’s your last; love deeply, speak sweetly, forgive. “Carpe Diem” everyone says: seize the day! But how many people actually do it? How many people make it through the morning coffee line without a grumble or a groan about how poor/slow service is or how their boss is making them work this job. How many of us complain about the things we don’t have when compared to many, we’re privileged? Not many; myself included. Carpe Diem is more difficult than we would think.

So imagine how difficult “Carpe Annum” would be? Seize the year! Make every moment mean something, make every "next time" or "maybe later" become "no, this time," and "yes, right now." Leave no room for regret or negativity because life is unpredictable and not always fair. Most people complain that they have no control over what happens to them, or that everything always ends up negatively for them. This is the way to think if you want your situation to be negative. Why not think that there’s nothing to lose if you try for something? Why not believe that even if something does end up negatively, there’s always a positive aspect to it, possibly a learning experience for the next time you encounter a situation of the same nature.

Find someone or something that makes you happy and keep that in your life. Not for a day, not for a year, but for a lifetime. I’m lucky enough to have found that someone who makes me happy and I have been living regret free since January 9^th. You know who you are, and you deserve a thank you among many other things. Eight months ago, I could never have written a blog about this subject or anything close to it.

Be positive! I fully believe that everything – good or bad – happens for a reason. Every experience you have in life lends to the next experience or maybe another experience down the road that you would not have experienced otherwise had this thing that happened before it never came to pass. Got lost on a country back road? Maybe you had time to talk to the people that you get lost with, find out new and interesting things about them and as a result become closer? Negativity begets negativity. Ever hear the saying, “birds of a feather flock together?” Okay, it’s great that you’re trying to not be so negative, but by being negative, you’re attracted people that are negative or have negative views.

Why waste your life seeing everything as half empty, unattainable, miserable or otherwise impossible? I hate to be preachy, but I find that in today’s society most find it easier to be negative than to be positive. After all, who can resist touting “I told you so,” when something goes wrong?

Go out, try. So what if it fails? At least you can walk away with the confidence in the fact that you’ve tried.

Want to go for that vacation but aren’t sure if you have time? Make time. Go. Have the time of your life, I guarantee that you won’t regret taking that time to make memories.

Don’t rush through life. It’s not a race. You’ll get there when you get there and who’s to judge about how long you take? People who judge and make negative comments wish they could have half of what you have. Take time to appreciate who you have, what you have and most importantly why you have these things in your life. These things will not always be there. Refer back to life sometimes being slightly unfair. This is learned also from experience.

Work less, play more. What’s important in your life? Your family, your friends or your job? All depends on how you look at it really. Don’t miss out on life for numbers on a paper that tell you how much you’re worth. Okay, I hear some of you telling me that a job that pays would inevitably help you “play more.” No, I’m not telling you to quit your job, buy a hobby farm in Oklahoma and remake it into party city, hide from the IRS when you refuse to pay taxes… I mean leave work at work and don’t make it your life. It’s an aspect of your life, not your entire being.

The most important thing to remember is that Carpe Diem is not a formula that you or some scientist in a lab can figure out, nor is Carpe Annum. It’s not something that you get on the first, second or maybe even third, fourth, fifth or umpteenth time. It’s tough work; it’s not a cake walk. It’s living to not regret. I’m not telling you how to achieve the meaning of life; I’m sharing with you my experience with Carpe Annum, Carpe Diem and Crape Situations.

Strive towards your own personal Carpe Annum.

So, in the immortal words of someone most of us know very well, “When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead.”

-          Barney Stinson.  

EDIT: This post is dedicated to my grandfather. A man who did everything, seized every moment and lived life to the fullest. Rest in Peace, Grandpa.

Late, I'm Late For A Very Important Date!

After careful consideration - and an especially helpful suggestion - I have decided to post blogs only once every Sunday afternoon. While I would like to sit in front of my computer every single day and compose beautifully mastered re-tellings and characteristically long opinions for the people who enjoy reading such things, (I'm looking at one person in particular) I find myself ridiculously predisposed.

I feel that if I try to put out a blog every single day I'll be posting non-interesting or particularly captivating words that don't really have an effect on anything or anyone. If I work my way up to that one amazing post every Sunday for a whole week, I have six times the chance to wow people. I would rather wow people than bore.

So there you have it; expect to expect a blog post every Sunday afternoon. This Sunday included.
 

Edward Cullen vs. Chuck Hogan & Guillermo Del Toro

Do you like Twilight? No?

       Would you like Twilight a little bit more if Edward's head flipped back like a Pez dispenser and he ate Bella right in the middle of the classroom, two chapters into the first - and therefore only - book? Not to mention every boyfriend or significant other in the span of the past few years would not have to endure either reading or sitting through another Twilight related event.

         If your answer was a resounding "Yes!" or you are the poor, aforementioned significant other then Chuck Hogan and Guillermo Del Toro's "The Strain" would be the read for you.

Though the majority of the novel is set in The Big Apple, the first chapter throws readers into the world of a young man on the very edge of a rapidly modernizing age, pre-World War II. This is where we are introduced to the story of Jusef Sardu, an ill-fated blue blood who becomes cursed.

           Wait, let me guess what you're thinking... "cursed to walk the night and feed on human blood!" You might even be speaking in a thick, clumsy, Transylvania, Boris Karloff inspired accent. For the most part, yes, you'd be right... but these vampires don't look much like Mr. Karloff and they definitely don't sound like him. Not to mention that they don't much care specifically for the blood of whiny, teen virgins who care for British film stars turned sparkling vampires.

            The novel takes an interesting romp through the lives of several New Yorkers who ultimately all become embroiled in the fight against what soon becomes a vampire plague (yes, think Night of the Living Dead, but with vampires) after a inbound 747 passenger liner stalls on the tarmac at the JFK airport. Ephraim Goodweather and Nora Martinez, disgraced CDC scientists, Vasily Fet, a vermin exterminator and Professor Abraham Setrakian - a Holocaust survivor turned vampire hunter - soon become the focus characters of the story.

              Del Toro's background in the macabre and ultimately gruesomely fascinating coupled with Hogan's ability to weave and interesting, dynamic plot make this novel nearly impossible to put down. From the scenes of trial and tribulation between characters and the fantastically horrific, this novel becomes - for all intents and purposes - a horror movie for the imagination, inked on paper instead of lit up on a screen.  

               If you're disappointed with what happened to vampires in the gap between Anne Rice and post- Stephanie Meyer, this is a book that has the potential to redeem the monster title for this creature of the night.

                Personally, I give this book an 8 out of 10 if for nothing else but the vivid imagery, nearly seamless plot line and the attempt to bring the vampire back into the genre of horror and not teen angst.

What I didn't quite like about the novel was the up and down tendencies of the action. Hills and valleys; if you can get through the first three chapters, the book only gets better.

This Blog thing...

So, this is the blog thing, eh?

Why not start one? Because I don't have time.
 Why don't I have time? School.
School? Yes school.

This is my fourth attempt at a blog. One of these attempts was semi-sort-of-maybe successful. I was forced to write it at gun-point, against my will, on pain of death, the discretion of a marking rubric. It was focused on chick-flicks which I guess isn't really an ingenious idea... but it worked and I watched girly movies as a part of school based work. It was an adventure and a half.

I guess I'm starting this blog as a branch-off for what I'd like to do in the future which is being an author. I've had a few suggestions for which direction I should take genre wise (Romance, Mystery, Fiction, Teen Fiction) but ultimately, I guess my goal is to really have a book of every genre. Far-fetched goal I guess for some people... Not really I say! You see, I work in a book store and therefore have a vague idea of what the market is really like.

Well at least I thought I did before I started shelving "legitimate," "books" by Tyra Banks, Hilary Duff, Lauren Conrad and most disappointing, Snookie and J-Wow. What is it that they have that I don't? Oh yes, established fame wherein they can produce crap en mass and actually have people who spend hard earned money on these tree-killing horrors. Poor children are starving in Africa and with the money you just spent on that book J-Wow is selling, yes, you can feed a hut of twelve, plus send little Aisha to school. Yes you can!

So I guess - before I go into a long winded rant about how life isn't fair, because I realize that this is a tired and therefore already widely accepted fact - this is it. This is the blog thing. I'm not really sure what my blog will be about at this point - look for rants, book reviews, writing updates and possibly in the future, publishing news.

This is a non-discriminatory blog in which all subjects will be addressed, yes, even that one that you're thinking about Blog stalker... even that.








... Maybe not.